which means that when he was choosing his super scary Dark Lord name, he just mashed up the surnames of the most positive figures in his life. poor sod can’t even evil right
literally a ‘what is your star wars name’ meme
2nd two letters of your mother’s last name Last two letters of your father’s last name
1st three letters of your name but with an R
Tups Rar
Fucking kill me
Atll Ric
Arco Riz.
I like it.
Uaer Rar
… aight
Rodo Rro
Ryll Ric
Olmi Rew
Eeer Rhe
Like the fucking Moon Moon of the Sith Lords.
Tetz Rav.
You know, that one actually sounds kind of plausible.
Okay, so. The problem with Tumblr is that even though it’s a great place to talk about social justice concepts it isn’t a great place to mobilize or organize political change. That means that social justice on here mostly ends up being performative rather than active.
Unfortunately the easiest way to perform your ideological purity within an online community is to point the finger at those who are less pure (see: callout posts, blacklists, smackdowns, receipt pulling, reductive black-and-white mantras/statements, ‘10 Reasons Why So-and-So Isn’t a Real Feminist’, and so on). I see this happening more and more and it makes me really uncomfortable because a) it discourages necessary discussion and learning within social movements by framing all differences/disagreements as moral battles where one person is right and the other person is terrible and b) it reduces social justice to a passive, self-congratulatory performance of personal identity rather than an active, organized pursuit of political change.
Look: Tumblr is many great things, but it is not a safe space. The safe space (a concept originating in the women’s liberation movement) is designed to allow members of a community to speak freely and compare personal experiences with the assurance of respect and the intention of expanding ideas while also finding common ground. Tumblr doesn’t work that way. It’s a vast online forum where likes, reblogs, and followers determine whether or not a particular voice is heard, and it’s just too fast, too big, too diverse, and too anonymous to assume good-will and common interest from all participants. Therefore, many people’s chief priority becomes loudly proving their loyalty to a particular group, as group members who say the wrong thing risk being cast out, blacklisted, harassed, and even threatened.
The result is that Tumblr communities become more polarized, beliefs become more entrenched, thought-terminating cliches abound, common interests are overlooked, and participants are hesitant to ask questions or do anything that might open them to criticism or condemnation (which naturally includes most meaningful political action).
And the problem with this Revenge of the Sith post-9/11 ‘you’re either with us 100% or you’re the enemy’ attitude (where we refuse to work with or even listen to people whose beliefs differ from ours in any way) isn’t just that it’s a little cultish and scary, it’s that it’s totally unsustainable in politics. It’s worth remembering that constantly culling a movement to get rid of less-than-perfect members doesn’t just make the movement purer and purer, it makes it smaller and weaker.
I’ve been having a really hard time staying motivated to work on anything lately and I was looking up ways to help and this really hit home. So I thought maybe it could help someone else too
this is a thing i remind myself of constantly when i write. i have to keep telling myself, it’s a first draft, you don’t have to have the RIGHT idea, you have to have AN idea, and you get it down and you see what you like about it, and then you can change the rest. you can have as many drafts as you want.
anyway this came up before but for those just tuning in i for one am still not over how lattimore translated οὐλομένη as “sluttish” when it refers to clytemnestra.
it means “accursed” or “destructive” and it’s the same word that famously describes the wrath of achilles in the second line of the iliad
but no, he didn’t think “oh cool, the ghost of agamemnon in the odyssey describes his murder at clytemnestra’s hands as if she were as destructive as achilles’ wrath! let’s make that clear to the reader by using the same word!”– on the contrary, he apparently thought “the murderer is a woman, so there’s only one option here, she’s a slut.”
shame him.
The last time I saw this on my dash it was someone having fun with Achilles’ ‘sluttish wrath’, which I enjoyed, as I have occasionally regretted some of Lattimore’s word choices myself. But this is unfair. Whatever was going through Lattimore’s head when he chose the word ‘sluttish’ here, I’m fairly confident it wasn’t ‘oh, she’s a bad woman, she must be a slut’.
Homer uses οὐλόμενος fourteen times, four in the Iliad and ten in the Odyssey. It describes Achilles’ wrath (I.2), Athene (V.876), Agamemnon (XIV.84), Ate (XIX.92), Clytaemestra (iv.92, xi.410, xxiv.97), Circe’s pig drug (x.394), the armour of Achilles (xi.555), hunger (xv.344, xvii.287, xvii.474), Antinous (xvii.484), and Penelope’s impending marriage to one of the suitors (xviii.273). It’s from the verb ὄλλυμαι ‘die, perish’, which was used in Greek as an insult: ὄλοιο ‘may you die’ is probably the single closest Greek equivalent to our ‘fuck you’, as a catch-all thing to say when you’re angry at someone. So
οὐλόμενος basically means ‘something swearable-at’, ‘something it’s worth saying ὄλοιο to’. This is why it’s often rendered as ‘accursed’ in polite English; I’d argue that a solid rule-of-thumb equivalent is actually ‘fucking’, used as an adjective.
οὐλόμενος in Homer is always spat. When it’s used of Achilles’ wrath, it’s not a term of respect or awe: mighty Achilles’ all-powerful rage! It’s Achilles’ fucking temper, that great disastrous liability that caused thousands of unnecessary deaths. Ares refers to Athene as οὐλομένη just after she gets Diomedes to stab him in Iliad V: that’s not ‘powerful Athene who has conquered me’, it’s ‘fucking Athene!!’. Odysseus is so furious with Agamemnon in XIV that he calls him οὐλόμενος to his face, which is politely turned into ‘accursed fellow!’ but should of course be ‘you fucking idiot!’.
When Agamemnon and Menelaus refer to Clytaemestra as οὐλομένη, they are absolutely not calling her powerful, destructive, ‘strong’. They’re swearing. So why ‘sluttish’, rather than some more gender-neutral term?
Well, Lattimore was clearly alive to the possibility, because when Menelaus calls her οὐλομένη in IV, it’s translated as ‘cursed’. Only Agamemnon calls her ‘sluttish’, and that’s in the Underworld when he’s comparing his homecoming (murdered by his deceitful wife) with the much better homecoming that awaits Odysseus (welcomed by his brave and faithful wife). Lattimore made the calculation, I think, that Agamemnon – a nasty piece of work throughout the Iliad, and arguably that poem’s most genuinely misogynistic character in a not-terribly-inspiring line-up – is exactly the kind of man who would bitterly characterise his wife as a slut for sleeping with somebody else. It’s an unpleasant thing to say, from an unpleasant person. When the much nicer Menelaus talks about the woman who murdered his brother, of course he calls her cursed, because what would you call someone who murdered your brother? ‘Sluttish’ is Lattimore very carefully bringing out the misogyny and pettiness so fundamental to Agamemnon’s character, making sure that even in the Underworld we can’t forget what a dick he is – and perhaps even implying that he’s more upset Clytaemestra cheated on him than that she stabbed him to death. In a more modern translation, ‘that bitch Clytaemestra’ would have a similar effect. It reminds us why Agamemnon had it coming.
You know, this scene is so powerful to me that sometimes I forget that not everyone who watches it will understand its significance, or will have seen Casablanca. So, because this scene means so much to me, I hope it’s okay if I take a minute to explain what’s going on here for anyone who’s feeling left out.
Casablanca takes place in, well, Casablanca, the largest city in (neutral) Morocco in 1941, at Rick’s American Cafe (Rick is Humphrey Bogart’s character you see there). In 1941, America was also still neutral, and Rick’s establishment is open to everyone: Nazi German officials, officials from Vichy (occupied) France, and refugees from all across Europe desperate to escape the German war engine. A neutral cafe in a netural country is probably the only place you’d have seen a cross-section like this in 1941, only six months after the fall of France.
So, the scene opens with Rick arguing with Laszlo, who is a Czech Resistance fighter fleeing from the Nazis (if you’re wondering what they’re arguing about: Rick has illegal transit papers which would allow Laszlo and his wife, Ilsa, to escape to America, so he could continue raising support against the Germans. Rick refuses to sell because he’s in love with Laszlo’s wife). They’re interrupted by that cadre of German officers singing Die Wacht am Rhein: a German patriotic hymn which was adopted with great verve by the Nazi regime, and which is particularly steeped in anti-French history. This depresses the hell out of everybody at the club, and infuriates Laszlo, who storms downstairs and orders the house band to play La Marseillaise: the national anthem of France.
Wait, but when I say “it’s the national anthem of France,” I don’t want you to think of your national anthem, okay? Wherever you’re from. Because France’s anthem isn’t talking about some glorious long-ago battle, or France’s beautiful hills and countrysides. La Marseillaise is FUCKING BRUTAL. Here’s a translation of what they’re singing:
Arise, children of the Fatherland! The day of glory has arrived! Against us, tyranny raises its bloody banner. Do you hear, in the countryside, the roar of those ferocious soldiers? They’re coming to your land to cut the throats of your women and children!
To arms, citizens! Form your battalions! Let’s march, let’s march! Let their impure blood water our fields!
BRUTAL, like I said. DEFIANT, in these circumstances. And the entire cafe stands up and sings it passionately, drowning out the Germans. The Germans who are, in 1941, still terrifyingly ascendant, and seemingly invincible.
“Vive la France! Vive la France!” the crowd cries when it’s over. France has already been defeated, the German war machine roars on, and the people still refuse to give up hope.
But here’s the real kicker, for me: Casablanca came out in 1942. None of this was ‘history’ to the people who first saw it. Real refugees from the Nazis, afraid for their lives, watched this movie and took heart. These were current events when this aired. Victory over Germany was still far from certain. The hope it gave to people then was as desperately needed as it has been at any time in history.
God I love this scene.
not only did refugees see this movie, real refugees made this movie. most of the european cast members wound up in hollywood after fleeing the nazis and wound up.
paul heinreid, who played laszlo the resistance leader, was a famous austrian actor; he was so anti-hitler that he was named anenemy of the reich.ugarte, the petty thief who stole the illegal transit papers laszlo and victor are arguing about? was played by peter lorre, a jewish refugee. carl, the head waiter? plaed by s.z. sakall. a hungarian-jewwhose three sisters died in the holocaust.
even then main nazi character was played by a german refugee: conrad veidt, who starred in one of the first sympathetic films about gay men and who fled the nazis with his jewish wife.
there’s one person in this scene that deserves special mention. did you notice the woman at the bar, on the verge of tears as she belts out la marseillaise? she’s yvonne, rick’s ex-girlfriend in the film. in real life, the actress’s name is madeleine lebeau and she basically lived the plot of this film: she and her jewish husband fled paris ahead of the germans in 1940. her husband, macel dalio, is also in the film, playing the guy working the roulette table. after they occupied paris, the nazis used his face on posters to represent a “typical jew.” madeleine and marcel managed to get to lisbon (the goal of all the characters in casablanca), and boarded a ship to the americas… but then they were stranded for two months when it turned out their visa papers were forgeries. they eventually entered the US after securing temporary canadian visas. marcel dalio’s entire family died in concentration camps.
go back and rewatch the clip. watch madeleine lebeau’s face.
casablanca is a classic, full of classic acting performances. but in this moment, madeleine lebeau isn’t acting. this isn’t yvonne the jilted lover onscreen. this is madeleine lebeau, singing “la marseillaise” after she and her husband fled france for their lives. this is a real-life refugee, her real agony and loss and hope and resilience, preserved in the midst of one of the greatest films of all time.
